Peyton Manning and Tom Brady were high schoolers when they appeared together on the same football field for the first time.

At a quarterback camp run by none other than Bill Walsh.

So said Thomas Brady Sr. — Tom’s dad — in a phone interview from San Mateo, Calif.

It happened in summer 1993 at Stanford University’s quarterback camp. Before Manning became a University of Tennessee Volunteer, Indianapolis Colt or Denver Bronco. And before Brady became a University of Michigan Wolverine or New England Patriot.

Both were budding star high school quarterbacks at the time. Even then, as today, each sought every edge he could get.

Manning was 17, about to enter his senior year at Isidore Newman School in New Orleans.

Brady was 16, heading into his junior year at Junipero Serra High School in San Mateo.

And the man who ran the camp was Stanford’s head coach at the time — Walsh. This was five years after he’d stepped down as the San Francisco 49ers’ top man following all those playoff runs that culminated into three Super Bowl championships in the ’80s.

To this day, apparently neither Manning nor Brady is aware the other was even there, the elder Brady said.

The man who runs Thomas Brady & Associates insurance specialists in San Mateo just found out about it a few weeks ago. A photo came to him courtesy of former MLB star Pat Burrell. It showed a group of players at the Walsh camp. Burrell, who was once a San Jose high school quarterback, also attended the camp.

“From that picture I can see about 25 or 30 kids,” Brady Sr. told QMI Agency.

Included in that group are Tom Brady, Peyton Manning and Pat Burrell.

It’s apropos, of course, that two of the greatest quarterbacks in the history of football received tutoring all those years ago, if only a smidgen of it, from legendary pass-master Bill Walsh.

College camps for youths usually are run by assistant coaches, but Brady Sr. remembers that Mr. West Coast Offence himself had instructed this group of quarterbacks.

“I’m sure he did, absolutely,” he said.

As a high school senior come fall 1993, Manning became a hotly coveted quarterback. One organization even named him the national high school player of the year. Most people in the Deep South expected him to follow in the footsteps of his famous father Archie and attend Ole Miss, where Archie Manning had become a legend a generation earlier.

Peyton chose Tennessee.

All these years later, Manning and Brady will duel for the 15th time as NFLers at Sunday’s AFC championship game in Denver (3 p.m. EST, CTV/FOX). Brady has won 10 of those games, Manning four.

The two sure-fire hall of famers have become friends off the field. They even attended the Kentucky Derby together a couple of years ago.

Have their fathers become friends, too? Not quite.

“But we have talked on the phone briefly, we have texted each other,” Brady Sr. said.

“A couple of years ago I made a comment when Peyton was out of the league that the league was just duller. Somebody had passed that along to Archie, and as a result of that comment we’ve had several conversations, and several texts and things. It’s a friendly relationship, but we’ve never broken bread together, although that opportunity will come, I’m sure.”

Both dads share the pride of having watched their sons do things that few NFL quarterbacks ever have for well more than a decade now.

“You know, you’re absolutely right,” Brady Sr. said. “I look at Tommy and this is his 14th year. And he has only played in 12 of those years (after watching from the bench as a rookie, and missing almost all of the 2008 season with a knee injury).

“Of the 12 years, in eight years he has taken his club to the conference championship. That’s pretty friggin’ unbelievable. And if we get there this year, it will be the sixth Super Bowl in 12 years. That’s a pretty remarkable statistic. I don’t think there has ever been a quarterback that has been to six Super Bowls.”

Correct.

But outdueling Manning in this, the Broncos quarterback’s most productive of his 16 seasons in the league, won’t be an easy task. Especially in Denver.

So what was young Brady’s reaction when his dad informed him that Manning also was at that Stanford camp?

“I haven’t even talked to him about it yet,” Brady Sr. said. “He’s been a little preoccupied.”

DINNER WITH BRADY JR. BEFORE GAME? FORGET IT

Tom Brady Sr. has seen other moms and dads of NFL players enjoy dinner with their sons the night before a game.

But it’s not something he and his wife Galynn have ever experienced with Tom Jr., quarterback of the New England Patriots. You can guess why.

“He’s doing his homework,” Brady Sr. said in a phone interview. “He’s all about business.

“It’s funny because I see other dads doing it on Saturday nights. A friend of mine, his son plays for Green Bay, and that player brought his buddies over to his dad’s house for dinner. Tommy would no more have dinner with us the night before a game than he would the Man on the Moon, because he’s studying.”

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